Real life and reel life

Your client is talking about his or her life situation-the end of a relationship, aging and ill parents, loss of a job, or disappointments in life. As nurse psychotherapists, we are trained to assist clients in ventilating feelings, identifying the underlying conflict, lending perspective about the psycho-dynamics of the situation, guiding the individual in working through the issues, and problem solving. You also may choose to do something else-suggest your client see a movie. Many psychotherapists recommend movies to clients facing tough choices.

Films can be a powerful tool to help people learn to cope more creatively with the issues they face each day. Movies, like books and plays, focus on the larger themes of every person's life: hope, courage, love, loyalty, loss, fear, and individuals' relationship to the world, spirituality, and themselves. People can develop insight into human problems by seeing how problems are addressed in films. Movies can offer ideas about the way we live our life and examine an often confusing world, much as ancient myths and fairy tales do. Aristotle taught that tragedy could transform theater audiences by purging the emotions through pity and fear. We can learn a great deal from those characters who falter or fail. Who hasn't recognized themselves-faulty habits, attitudes, behavior-in screen tales of family tension or moral lapses?

We also can look to movies to inspire us by portraying an ideal. Steven Simon, a producer of "Somewhere in Time" and other films, comments on how movies like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and "A Beautiful Mind" explore the nature of life, love, and time in The Force Is With You: Mystical Movie Messages That Inspire Our Lives (2002).

Simon is passionate about awakening us to the spiritual cinema genre, movies that deal with our search for meaning in life and look at who we might be when we operate at our very best. He examines the power of love and who we can be when we re-source that innate goodness and strength in all of us in movies such as "Cast Away" and "Forrest Gump." "Antwone fisher" is an example of extraordinary choices made to transcend and transform personal hardship. Films like "Mulholland Drive" and "Vanilla Sky" illustrate the nature of reality and illusion. They allow us to ask relevant questions such as, "Do we create our own reality?" and "Can we change the traumatic events or our past?" Spiritually oriented movies touch people's lives on a very deep level.

This is a new movement and a new way to think about films. Simon believes movies are one of the most profound tools we have to assist evolution. His book is an inspiring work about inspiring story-tellers and how their stories eventually got made into movies that have an impact on our lives and our take on who we are and why we are here.

Some might argue that not all films are instructive, insightful, or filled with meaning. Many films have violence, nudity, and strong sexual language. Some critics and researchers have argued that the depiction of violence in films and on television increases the violence in society. The disturbing, painful, enraging portrayals of the cruelties the human race is capable of can increase a client's sense of hopelessness and injustice. Clients may report that they are disturbed by seeing a violent film. Some individuals with poor judgment get ideas from movies, which they enact with disastrous and often tragic consequences. Do we really need to bring more violence into our world by viewing it on the screen? Is there such a thing as thoughtful viewing of a violent film to help us reflect on violence, its causes, and the ways we face and perhaps surmount it in our own lives?

Others might argue that movies portraying mental illness in a negative view, or in a horrific and frightening manner, such as "Psycho," do more harm than good and do not provide relief or understanding of oneself. Action films, romantic comedies, and fun movies provide entertainment and distraction from a person's personal situation, but do not enhance understanding of ourselves or offer solutions to the problems in our lives.

Referring clients to movies can backfire when the person doesn't relate to the story or is taken out of rather than into him- or herself. While many movies are powerful to watch, not all are deep or solemn. Idealized images or unrealistic scenarios can lead to romanticized pictures of family, life, and relationships. Wouldn't it be better to recommend a good novel, a self-help book, an inspirational piece?

Yet, who can argue with the power of the visual image? Ingmar Bergman, the well-known Swedish director, says, "No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul" (1988, p. 8). When I was in graduate school, a psychiatrist told me I should read the trashy best-sellers and go to all the popular movies because these are the stones and images my clients will be responding to and using as a source of input for making life choices. As psychotherapists, we need to be aware of the influences in society that are shaping the thinking of our clients on both a conscious and an unconscious level. Can we afford to exclude the use of film as a tool in our practice when the majority of people go to the movies on a regular basis? Would it not behoove us to guide our clients to the movies that examine our concerns and anxieties about aging, handicaps, illness and death, love and sex, marriage and divorce, coming of age, prejudice, homosexuality, mental illness, substance abuse, violence and rape, war, taking a stand, family, and friendship?